Welcome to MWERA 2018!
Conducting Educational Research that Matters
October 24-26, 2018
Kingsgate Marriott Conference Center, Cincinnati, OH

The 2018 Annual Meeting of the Mid‐Western Educational Research Association (MWERA) will be held at the beautiful Kingsgate Marriott Conference Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. This is our inaugural year at this scenic, stylish well‐situated location. The hotel will provide us with spacious and well‐equipped meeting facilities, and plenty of common spaces for networking with fellow MWERA members. Additionally, the conference center is a short walk to the Cincinnati Zoo and about ten minutes to downtown, so a short bus or Uber ride away from the Ohio River, National Underground Freedom Center, Over‐the‐Rhine, Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, and the Banks. This year we invite all scholars, professionals and students, practitioners, and administrators —to join us in a friendly and collegial atmosphere as we connect around the issues and problems that are important to us as educational professionals. There will be opportunities to learn, reflect, make new connections, and renew old acquaintances. Prepare to be energized by attending MWERA!

Conference Theme
Come present and learn with MWERA this year! We have an exciting program of workshops, invited speakers, and peer‐reviewed scholarly works presented in a variety of session formats. This year’s program theme is: Conducting Educational Research that Matters How can we make educational research matter even more? Schools and universities are challenged by a host of social
justice issues. The news is rife with stories about culture clashes, political ideologues, and divisive language. The struggle to negotiate, resist, challenge, and/or reaffirm particular educational practices is at the heart of educational research. Unfortunately, educational research is commonly accessed solely by those in the field of education, and often only at the level of academia. It can feel like educational researchers read and write for each other, and that changes in schooling move at a very slow pace. In order to meet the needs of students, parents, teachers, school leaders, and communities, we must choose topics and develop research studies that are relevant and meaningful to contemporary schooling. Moreover, we may need to go beyond our typical publication possibilities so that what we learn is distributed in a way that can be accessed by those inside and outside of the field. Some of the current social justice concerns in education include the following:

• Charter schools
• School vouchers
• High‐stakes testing and funding for testing and test preparation
• Access to technology and the corporatization of schooling
• Over‐identification of students of color and English learners in special education
• Wealth disparities between schools
• Governance of curricular decisions
• Cost of higher education
• Immigration/refugee populations
• Mental health and the opioid epidemic
• Transiency
• Socio‐emotional education